Chocolate Pills Once upon a time when we were just friends, you knew that being dumped by an asshole boyfriend would leave me sick to my stomach would make me ache until all I could do was bend double in the shower letting hot water scald my back. You knew to come to the echoey house where I was alone, bring me chicken soup in a can, feed me small round noodles, pearls slipping over my tongue. You knew to bring a sleeping bag, stand watch all night on the couch, chasing away my demons. You knew when to take me out of the house into the bracing cold to watch The Princess Bride in which the hero chases his kidnapped lover over rough seas, through dark swampy woods, past burly castle guards. Even as he lies on a torture rack, near death, he swallows a chocolate pill concocted by a magician and revives, whispers the words “true love” and drags himself off to rescue his bride-to-be. What about now? Imprisoned in a tower, nothing to eat but bitterness, I cannot see how to save myself, do not think you can save me. I stand washing dishes at the kitchen sink, hearing our children whimper for this or that, and sense your weariness. There are moments like this, when I think I will starve, fall off the edge, but I don’t. You bring me from the brink with a marguerita, with homemade mac ‘n cheese, with a memory: languorous nights at The Dancing Crab face-to-face, between us nothing but a pile of blue crabs turned orange by steam and pitchers of cold, cheap beer. Fingers spiced with Old Bay, we would lift the sweating mugs with the heels of our hands. I could eat the longest, picking crabs relentlessly, feeding a hunger that never seemed satisfied.(published in October 2001 Knoxville Writers’ Guild anthology, Literary Lunch)

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